Excuse me while I kiss the sky

Happy Sunday morning to all of you. I have had a really nice past couple of days. The weather has been nice, the good mood of my fellow Minnesotans is omnipresent, and my March Madness tournament is looking better and better. Friday night, I hung out with a friend from work. He and I went to Joe Sensor's in Roseville, enjoyed their extremely good happy hour deals, and watched some basketball. This was actually the second time I was there as I enjoyed meal and conversation with Bobbins several hours previous to that. Yesterday was a day of Wii and gorging. Our friend Emily invited a bunch of us over to eat loads of food, play Rockband, other Wii games, and libations.

1. When I got home yesterday, I turned on the news and ABC did some surveys to find out which cars were pulled over the most and ticketed. No surprise, Hummers came in as the number one car pulled over. Number two, was Toyota Scion TC's. That is the car I have!!! Not only that, there are three models of Scions and all three of them were on the top ten list. I thought this was weird. The list was all Mercedes, and Lexus, and... Scions!

2. By far, the best name in the NCAA basketball tournament is of Alabama State center: Chief Kickingstallionsims. Not only is he 7'1, his last name is Kickingstallionsims!

3. One of the best Sports Illustrated articles I ever read was in the latest SI. It is about athletes and their money. It does not glamorize their lifestyle, but instead talks of the leaches, greedy ex-wives, child support, and other reasons that show that although professional athletes' salaries have risen steadily in the last three decades, by the time NFL players have been retired two years, 78% of them either have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress because of joblessness or divorce. The number one reason these guys go broke is divorce/child support. Most of the times these guys don't divorce while they are playing, but once they are retired, at home all of the time, that is when the problems happen. The article also gets into entourages, shady business deals, duplicitous agents, and other leaches. Plus, you can't compare these athletes to 25 year old wealthy investment bankers or stock brokers. You have to compare these guys to 25 year old lottery winners. They have had no business training, and blow their money on random crap and then when they retire, they still want to keep up their lifestyle. The average NFL tenure is four seasons. Let's say the average player makes two million during that time. You and I would say, we should have no pity for those guys when they make that amount of money by 26. However, they have no degrees, divorce and child support may take more than half of that, agents take their cuts, "financial advisers" may take their cut, plus the insurance on their Lamborghini Diablo is expensive. Now, they are 26, almost broke, and have no idea what to do with their lives. As I said, great article.

4. I mentioned this in my last blog statement, I am so sick of all of this fake outrage over Obama's Special Olympics joke. It was distasteful, he apologized, and of story. This morning CNN ran some clips of Special Olympics athletes who were practically in tears over their hero mocking their self-worth. Yesterday, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin said, "I was shocked to learn of the comment made by President Obama about Special Olympics. This was a degrading remark about our world's most precious and unique people, coming from the most powerful position in the world." Palin is a hypocrite to the 100th power. Do you remember how proud Palin was that she would not accept any Federal Stimulus money? According to the Anchorage Daily News, "the biggest single chunk of money Palini s turning down is about $170 million for education, including money that would go for programs to help... special needs students." Palin is just a pompous jerk looking for attention. If she really cared about the needs of children in special education, she wouldn't have turned down millions of dollars that would help them!

5. In Obama's press conference, he listed his top four goals of his presidency"

A) Reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, and put our nation back on a path to clean, renewable energy.
B) Renewing America's commitment to competitive and complete education for every American child.
C) Health Care Reform
D) Cutting the deficit in half.

Those all sound like really good goals. The deficit is currently at 1.85 trillion. I highly doubt that will be reduced by 50% but I am still hopeful.

6. Currently listening to "If you leave me now" by Chicago.